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Becca Mancari
The
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Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities since 1971
Vol. 50 • No. 32 • August 6-12, 2020
Coalition aims to address racism, safety in LGBTQ bars Courtesy Dan Tavares Arriola
City Councilman Dan Tavares Arriola
Gay man seeks to lead Tracy by Matthew S. Bajko
L
ast summer, gay Tracy City Councilman Dan Tavares Arriola was recuperating from being hit by a car in downtown Stockton after attending an LGBTQ event where he was an invited speaker. A year later, having fully recovered, Arriola is running for his city’s open mayor seat, as the incumbent is termed out of office. Should he be elected, Arriola would be the first LGBTQ mayor and the first mayor of color. “In the city of Tracy we’ve had a history of challenging history, and I think that given the political climate it is time to address so many issues we have not talked about before,” said Arriola, 30, who works as a deputy district attorney for the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office. “When I looked at the candidates that were running, I didn’t see the type of leadership I wanted for my city.” Born on November 3, Arriola’s birthday coincides with this year’s fall election. “I am hoping for a really good 31st birthday present,” he told the Bay Area Reporter. His decision to run for mayor of the Central Valley city adjacent to the Bay Area is hardly surprising. He had told the B.A.R. last year that he was keeping his “options open” when asked about seeking the position. As of Wednesday morning, two women of color had also pulled papers to run for mayor: termed out Tracy Councilwoman Nancy Young, who is Black, and former Tracy planning commissioner and business owner Jass Sangha, who grew up in Mumbai, India. The filing deadline for the race is Friday, August 7, and several other local leaders are expected to enter the contest. Born in San Jose to a white mother and Latino father, his parents divorced after Arriola was born, and his mother moved them briefly to Portugal. When he was 3 years old, they returned to Northern California and settled in Tracy where his father was living. His parents remarried and had a second son, now age 24, but divorced again last year. After leaving to attend college at UCLA, where he was the political science valedictorian in 2011, and then USC law school, Arriola moved back in 2014. Single, he continues to rent an apartment, as “the cost of housing is astronomical here,” he said. Arriola served as the DA office’s first community prosecutor, tasked with implementing “progressive prosecution” strategies for such issues as homelessness, human trafficking, neighborhood nuisances, and school truancy. Arriola’s campaign slogan of “a new generation of leadership” may ring familiar, as gay former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg used it for his bid to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee this year. But Arriola noted he has been using the phrase since 2016 when he mounted his first bid for public office, winning a seat on his local school board. Two years later Arriola was elected to the City Council as its first LGBTQ member. In 2019 his request that the city fly the rainbow flag for one day in June in honor of Pride Month was approved, and this year it flew for the entire month. “We also had a proclamation recognizing the LGBTQ community in our city, something I thought I would never see,” said Arriola. “Growing up here, there was a lot of disdain for our community.” While last year’s vote to fly the Pride flag for a day in honor of the 50th anniversary of the See page 3 >>
by John Ferrannini
[Editor’s note: This article contains the Nword spelled out because it was used in direct quotes by a Black man, referring to what people had called him at one of the bars.]
F
or four hours July 30, a new coalition of Black, trans, and queer nightlife figures held a virtual town hall where they interviewed the owners and managers of LGBTQ bars in San Francisco about racism and safety issues at their establishments. The Bay Area Queer Nightlife Coalition preceded the event, which was held on Twitch and sponsored by Strut, a community health and wellness center in the Castro, with a survey about queer nightlife that garnered hundreds of responses. The survey gave each nightlife spot a rating (on a scale of 0 to 4) on inclusivity, and another on safety. “The survey showed that many participants felt most nightlife spaces prioritized and centered ‘cis gay white men’ over other patrons,” the coalition stated. “The survey showed that women and femmes, Black and Indigenous folks, and trans and nonbinary folks didn’t feel safe or included in most nightlife spaces.” Survey respondents also said these groups were not adequately represented in staffing,
Steven Underhill
The Edge bar in the Castro was one of several LGBTQ nightlife establishments that came under criticism for alleged racism during a July 30 town hall by the Bay Area Queer Nightlife Coalition.
management, marketing, and performances. Further, survey respondents mentioned that “many nightlife spaces struggled to manage a culture of touching without consent [and] instances of sexual harassment,” and that a “substance heavy environment” made sober patrons feel excluded. Representatives from The Stud; The Edge; Badlands and Toad Hall; and The Eagle were presented with the results of the survey as it related to their particular establishments and in
restorative justice moments some of them were faced with those who said they’d had negative experiences at their businesses. Jolene Linsangan, owner of Jolene’s, was originally slated to attend but did not. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Jolene’s is facing a lawsuit from a former co-owner as well as a slew of accusations from an anonymous group of employees regarding alleged employee mistreatment, manipulation, racism, See page 8 >>
Trans woman sues San Quentin prison, alleging retaliation
by John Ferrannini
A
transgender woman is suing officials at San Quentin State Prison, alleging that she was abused in custody and retaliated against with false criminal charges. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported the queer-owned law firm Medina Orthwein LLP is representing C. Jay Smith and filed the suit in United States District Court for the Northern District of California June 29. The suit contains four counts. The most serious is an allegation that officials at the Marin County prison had Smith, 59, charged with a crime in retaliation for her complaints about the sexual violence and repeated harassment. “Under the guise of a[n] investigation into the assault, defendants ransacked Ms. Smith’s cell and left it open and unattended for other people in custody to steal her property,” the complaint states. “Defendants then caged Ms. Smith, like an animal, verbally berated her, threatened her with physical assault, sexually harassed and assaulted her, and issued her multiple fabricated Rules Violations Reports (RVR) riddled with glaring inconsistencies and due process violations.” Smith was subsequently isolated for months, which led to two crisis bed admissions, the complaint states. “I went to the mental health crisis bed and was totally beaten and broken,” Smith wrote in a recent letter to the B.A.R. “But soon I began to realize that [if] I worked hard on myself, the world has to offer some type of relief. ... I had to believe that I deserved to be safe from sexual predators and couldn’t allow anyone to abuse my body and take away what I worked so hard to accomplish in my life, so I began to fight.” Subsequently, however, according to the complaint, defendants “placed a broken piece of art in her cell inside a piece of fabric, fabricating a weapon commonly referred to as a ‘slungshot.’” “The art – a statue of a head with a graduation cap Ms. Smith’s friend gave her as motivation for her to complete her GED – had been in
Courtesy Medina Orthwein LLP
C. Jay Smith has sued officials at San Quentin State Prison.
Ms. Smith’s cell for years,” the complaint states. “By placing the statue in the fabric, defendants used it to fabricate a ‘deadly weapon,’ of which they charged Ms. Smith with possession. The resulting RVR was referred to the district attorney’s office, which charged Ms. Smith with a crime that could add 10 more years of time to her sentence.” Wrote Smith in her letter: “I was targeted for reporting my fear to my mental health providers.” “Defendants’ campaign of torture and retaliation against Ms. Smith sent a message to future victims, especially transgender women housed in men’s facilities: do not report sexual violence or safety concerns or you, too, will be punished,” according to the complaint. “Ms. Smith’s case demonstrates that the ‘Me Too’ movement and the protections it has provided to women also needs to find its way to the violence and state-initiated torment transgender people face behind CDCR’s prison walls.” The Marin County District Attorney’s office confirmed to the B.A.R. July 10 that a complaint of custodial possession of a weapon against Smith was made. Smith has been incarcerated since 1998 on a 25
years-to life sentence with the possibility of parole, according to the complaint. She is now housed at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Jennifer Orthwein, one of Smith’s attorneys, wouldn’t state on what charge Smith was convicted around that time, saying it is not relevant to her abuse in the prison system. In her letter to the B.A.R., Smith wrote that it was for assault with a deadly weapon with great bodily injury, which she stated was in self-defense. “I was working the streets and a fight broke out between myself and the guy I was with,” Smith wrote. “He lied and said I hit him, when in fact it was the other way around. He beat me.” According to Orthwein, Smith “was on a really promising path to parole” at the time of the possession of a deadly weapon charge. “[Smith] had just successfully completed the long-term offender program (LTOP) which is designed to prepare people with long sentences for parole,” Orthwein wrote in an email to the B.A.R. “She had also recently been accepted to the California Reentry Institute – which is only available at San Quentin and provides reentry support prior to and during parole. Most who are in this program do parole; however, when Ms. Smith was retaliated against, she also became ineligible for this program and subsequently transferred out of [San Quentin].” Smith had not had any disciplinary reports “for a couple years,” Orthwein stated, adding that Smith “was in a leadership role at San Quentin prior to the retaliation.” Orthwein said in a phone interview with the B.A.R. that both retaliation and anti-trans attitudes are common in the criminal justice system.
Other allegations
Another allegation in the lawsuit is that the officials at the prison failed to protect Smith from conditions that made her vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault, which the lawsuit states constitutes a violation of her Eighth Amendment constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. See page 8 >>